This invention relates to a cord holding device which is particularly although not exclusively suitable for securing an electrical or like cord on a patient's hospital bed or the like in an accessible position convenient to the patient.
Hospital rooms are usually provided with various patient-operable electrical devices, such as nurse call buttons, radios, and the like, and it is obviously desirable for their operating switches, generally on cords, to be readily accessible to a patient lying in bed. Often, such electrical cords, terminating in operating switches, are simply tied around the bedhead, but this is not particularly convenient, and there have been proposals in the past for the provision of clamp-type devices and the like which secure such cords in a desired position to the actual bed clothes. Examples of such devices may be seen, in prior U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,876,464 and 3,179,991.
Various objects of the invention include, for example, the provision of a novel form of cord holding device for the general purpose indicated in securing electrical cords to hospital or other beds; the provision of a cord holding device which can be securely retained in a required position on the bed clothes while being relatively simple to release and reposition; a cord holding device which can locate and secure cords of different size; and a cord holding device from which the cord can be released, if required, without removing the entire device from the bed, so that the cord can be resecured to the bed in the original position.
The invention as disclosed in the parent application provides a three-part cord holding device comprising a base member, which in use may be secured by adhesive or by a belt to a mattress cover, pad or the like under a bed sheet, a cord holder member which snaps onto the base member over the bed sheet, so as to trap the bed sheet therebetween, the cord holder member having a cylindrical wall with spaced top-opening slots for receipt of the cord with the cord extending chord-wise across the holder member, and a cover member which snaps onto the holder member to trap the cord in the slots. The cover member may have a depending cylindrical wall with bottom-openings slots complementary to the slots in the cord holder member so as to trap the cord therebetween, so that the cover member can be rotated on the holder member thereby adjusting the effective width of the slots to suit different size cords. Friction means, such as peripheral teeth on one member and an interfitting projection on the other member, may be provided for retaining the cover member in a selected rotational position.
The holder member in the parent application is provided with a pushbutton for engaging against the base member and forcing these members apart when the pushbutton is depressed, thereby separating the holder member from the bed clothes, the pushbutton having an actuating portion extending upwardly through a central opening in the cover member. All of the components of the tender may be molded in a hard plastic.